The Weathercock | Page 5

with them?"
"Been fighting Martha to get her to cook them."
"And failed?" said the doctor quietly, as he peered into the basket, and

turned over the soft, downy, red-cheeked peaches he had brought in.
"No, uncle,--won."
"Now, you good people, it's nearly half-past eight. Breakfast--
breakfast. Bring in the ham, Eliza."
"Good-morning, my dear," said the doctor, bending down to kiss the
pleasantly plump elderly lady who had just opened the dining-room
door, and keeping up the fiction of its being their first meeting that
morning.
"Good-morning, dear."
"Come, Vane, my boy," cried the doctor, "breakfast, breakfast. Here's
aunt in one of her furious tempers because you are so late."
"Don't you believe him, my dear," said the lady. "It's too bad. And
really, Thomas, you should not get in the habit of telling such dreadful
fibs even in fun. Had a nice walk, Vane?"
"Yes, aunt, and collected a capital lot of edible fungi."
"The word fungi's enough to make any one feel that they are not edible,
my dear," said Aunt Hannah. "What sort did you get? Not those nasty,
tall, long-legged things you brought before?"
"No, aunt; beautiful golden chanterelles. I wanted to have them cooked
for breakfast."
"And I have told him it would be high treason," said the doctor.
"Martha would give warning."
"No, no, my dear, not quite so bad as that, but leave them to me, and
I'll cook them for lunch myself."
"No need, aunt; Martha came down from her indignant perch."
"I'm glad of that," said the lady smiling; "but, one minute, before we go

in the dining-room: there's a beautiful souvenir rosebud over the
window where I cannot reach it. Cut it and bring it in."
"At your peril, sir," said the doctor fiercely. "The last rose of summer! I
will not have it touched."
"Now, my dear Tom, don't be so absurd," cried the lady. "What is the
use of your growing roses to waste--waste--waste themselves all over
the place."
"You hear that, Vane? There's quoting poetry. Waste their sweetness on
the desert air, I suppose you mean, madam?"
"Yes: it's all the same," said the lady. "Thank you, my dear," she
continued, as Vane handed the rose in through the window.
"My poor cut-down bloom," sighed the doctor; but Vane did not hear
him, for he was setting his hat down again in the museum-like hall,
close by the fishing-tackle and curiosities of many lands just as a door
was opened and a fresh, maddening odour of fried ham saluted his
nostrils.
"Oh, murder!" cried the lad; and he rushed upstairs, three steps at a
time, to begin washing his hands, thinking the while over his encounter
with his Creole fellow-pupil.
"Glad I didn't fight him," he muttered, as he dried his knuckles, and
looked at them curiously. "Better than having to ask uncle for his
sticking-plaster."
He stopped short, turning and gazing out of the bedroom window,
which looked over the back garden toward the field with their Jersey
cows; and just then a handsome game-cock flapped his bronzed wings
and sent forth his defiant call.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo! indeed," muttered Vane; "and he thinks me a
regular coward. I suppose it will have to come to a set-to some day. I
feel sure I can lick him, and perhaps, after all, he'll lick me."

"Oh, Vane, my dear boy, don't!" cried Mrs Lee, as the lad rushed down
again, his feet finding the steps so rapidly that the wonder was that he
did not go headlong, and a few seconds later, he was in his place at the
dining-room table, tastily arranged with its plate, china, and flowers.
A walk before breakfast is a wonderful thing for the appetite, and Vane
soon began with a sixteen-year-old growing appetite upon the white
bread, home-made golden butter, and the other pleasant products of
the doctor's tiny homestead, including brahma eggs, whose brown
shells suggested that they must have been boiled in coffee.
The doctor kept the basket he had brought in beside him on the cloth,
and had to get up four times over to throw great fat wood-lice out of
the window, after scooping them up with a silver tablespoon, the dark
grey creatures having escaped from between the interstices of the
basket, and being busily making their way in search of some dry, dark
corner.
"It is astonishing what a predilection for peaches the wood-louse has,"
said the doctor, resuming his seat.
"All your fault, uncle," said Vane, with his mouth full.
"Mine! why?"
"You see you catch them stealing, and then you forgive them and let
them go to find their way back to the south wall, so that they can begin
again."
"Humph! yes," said the doctor; "they have plenty of enemies to shorten
their lives without my